ORIGINAL: DUSTINNEWTON
You young whipper-snappers have it to easy these days! Back when I was your age, I had to walk uphill both ways to the RC field, carrying a block of ice, to fly my planes!! We'd go to the Wal-Marts and buy an armload of planes, and crash all of 'em just to learn how to fly. I made a nickel a day and had to save for months to buy a plane! Kids just don't appreciate the value of a nickel anymore...
Sorry about that! I skipped ahead 50 years and was practicing my old man wisdom!!! :-))
LOL.............. sounds like you had it pretty easy growing up. When I was a kid we had to walk to skool in 5 ft of snow barefoot and yes......it was uphill both ways! The worst part was having to work 24 hrs a day also (We had to get up a half an hr before we went to bed)
that being said........ FMS is a fairly decent flight sim to learn orientation, but isn't too good for much else. I tried it and immedaitly went to the LHS and bought FSOne with a controller. I had about 10 hrs logged in on the J3 Cub before i ever even tried to fly my plank. I flew my gf's first and was able to get a shakey circle and a beautiful landing because I had my orientation down as well as learning to flare just before landing.
Now we come to the meat of my point........... after flying hers once, I decided I knew how to fly planks and went and bought myself the exact same kit. I built it way to fast and cut so many corners I was destined for failure before i even installed the motor and ESC. Needless to say, it flew great for about a half a lap, then decided the ground looked inviting and nosedived from 40ft into the ground. I rebuilt it and repainted it (more weight) and took it out again, this time i made it a whopping 300 ft and just started to bank when it nosedived in again. I couldn't even get it to rise above 10 ft. Since then, I have been putting in alot more sim time and have flown in winds up to 8mph steady with 14mph gusts and successfully taken off and landed. Without a sim, I would be nowhere near close enough to be building my second plane today and hoping to fly this weekend over in Eastern WA. We will see how well it goes and if sim time really does pay off!
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Of all the things I ever lost....................................... I miss my mind the most!